Over the past several years, many changes have taken place to make public areas and accommodations more accessible and functional for those members of society burdened by impaired physical or sensory function. Many of these changes have been mandated by changes to federal law, while others have resulted from increased awareness of the obstacles posed by many public facilities for persons with disabilities. However, notwithstanding these improvements, many public transportation facilities, such as, for example, bus stations and stops, railroad stations, and airport terminals, continue to pose obstacles for those persons who are visually impaired. It has proven difficult to efficiently provide refusable, non-visual communication of detailed information to individual users of such facilities. As a result, notwithstanding large expenditures of public funds, public transportation facilities remain underutilized while a segment of the population is struggling to find accessible transportation.
In addition, heretofore communication devices employing transmitters and receivers of lightwave signals have failed to adequately perform under conditions where significant ambient light (e.g., sunlight) is present. Information-carrying lightwave signals produced by such devices were often undiscernible on account of the noise or interference produced by such ambient light. Moreover, prior developments have proven inadequate in regulating the effective range of the transmitters employed to optimize the signal for the particular application at hand to insure a constant, reproducible, reliable range of effective transmission.
Thus, a need exists for transportation vehicles and transit systems with enhanced accessibility and functionality from the perspective of visually-impaired persons. Such devices are needed not only to enhance the quality of certain peoples' lives, but also to enhance the value of transportation systems by broadening their use to include all members of the public. Moreover, a need exists for vehicles and systems which are adapted to provide this accessibility and functionality under conditions which may include varying levels of sunlight or other forms of ambient light energy.